Jordan,
opened his hands,
blades of grass fell back down
to join the living.
Water rounded stones
surrounded him.
His skin swallowed the sunlight
streaming through the leaves.
So tranquil yet.....
The whizz of humming
electricity fused into his ears
and he screamed.
A howl
that bounced down the path
across the high rock cliffs
splashed against the falls
below,then died.
The springs were ice in July,
tourists floundered blue lipped
through the gathering
pool,up into
the weight of water.
The hiss and crash
from fifty feet above
drank their throats
dry of sound and breath.
Jordan,
screamed again,
to drown
the smashing waters
challenging his voice.
He absently scooped a handfull
of dirt from the trail,
rolled it into his mouth.
Grey spittle
spilled down his chin.
He squatted
in the ferns below the path,
glared at the steady flow of
strangers going by,
mumbling three parts
of a conversation
happening inside his head,
itermittent bursts
of garbled screams and
wild tattered frenzy.
Jordan,
had faded
into blue wierdness
and left us strangled
by circumstance.
A woman fleeing up the long path
stopped Trip and I
"It sounds like he's on something,
he take anything?"
she asked
as her eyes puddled away from
the center of her face
and collected themselves
at her temples.
No.
Trip stared,
bewildered.
We walked away
from the melted woman,
decided on a plan of action.
3 miles out to the main road
a quick left and
Jordan
would be a memory
in the rearview.
We floated through
some stuttered semblance
of a conversation.
Trip would not
leave him behind.
"When he comes to
he'll be lost,
and I'll have to answer
for it"
A gallant philosophy,
but Trip
was not equipped
to deal with the authorities,
so it was down to me.
With a flimsy alibi
I found the park rangers.
"Jordan,"
I told them
"had just returned
from Desert Storm
and obviously
suffered from
some form
of combat delusion."
The rangers
stood at the top of the path
and said
"good luck with that."
They were afraid
the sight of their uniforms
would send him down
deeper into whatever
hell he had descended.
Trip and I started down the path.
The screams stopped.
The path empty.
The tourists gone.
Half way down we found
Jordan
in the middle
of the trail.
Clothes shredded,
he was covered in scars
bleeding slightly from his head.
Hands on hips
"Where'd everybody go?"
His pupils were still huge
but at least he had regained
his ability to interact
with real people.
As we walked up the path
toward my car
and our escape
I said,
"Jordan,
what possessed you
to take two of those things
when you know
half of one
sends you sideways?
|
Submission Name: Doublecrossing Jordan
